EDIT: I was extremely remiss in failing to credit this article at Gingerwench.com, where ComLuv for Intense Debate was tested and refined. Seeing ID at work, together with CommentLuv, and seeing how seamlessly they worked together was a further impetus to install ID here at the Aerie. Thanks, Ginger, and again, my apologies for the oversight!

Another benefit of Intense Debate is the ability to register with ID (even if you aren’t a blogger) and follow other commenters you enjoy, regardless of where they comment. For bloggers, we can moderate (if necessary) and reply to comments directly from email: No need to log into the WordPress dashboard!

Obviously, I’m excited about the possibilities ID presents, not only for the Aerie, but for enhancing the community aspect of the blogoverse. But I’m also interested in your perceptions: Is ID too intrusive? What about the comment rating system? (I’m not a huge fan, to be honest.) Any other thoughts about Intense Debate?

Intense Debate Now Active! is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

Lately, my approach to blogging has mirrored a black hole:Lots and lots of thoughts and ideas about things to write about, all whirling around inside my head, but nothing is able to escape. Talk about your writer’s block! Except…I don’t believe I’m truly “blocked.” No…there is a huge external force also operating on my “blog hole.” In my case, it’s called “inertia,” and is the embodiment of Newton’s First Law: “[An] object remains in a state of rest … unless acted upon by an outside force." Newton’s Third Law also seems to be at work. In my case, that means my desire to blog (f1) is opposed equally by my innate laziness (f2).

Yes, I’m lazy: It’s much too easy to read others’ blogs than it is to work on my own. Or play around all day with blog design just to get my navigation menu to display a transparent background, and get the Twitter and RSS feed links to be on the same line as the nav menu, without resorting to some ridiculous design kludges.¹

But the stark reality is, I’m inordinately jealous of some of my friends and fellow bloggers who seem to provide so much more content, while also maintaining a paying job! For crying out loud: I’ve been retired for 18 months, and it seems each month I do less, rather than more. ²

Clearly, the current post is a self-intervention. ³ I’m also hopeful it’s cathartic, in a sense, or rehabilitative. We’ll know in a few days (or weeks) if it’s nothing more than verbal diarrhea.

In the meantime, I strongly encourage you to read TJ’s series on becoming someone who comments (on blogs). Tami wrote a couple of very insightful articles along the same lines, and they deserve your attention as well. I may or may not have had a few things to say on the topic of blog comments myself. In my case, I also discuss WordPress add-ons for bloggers, as well as provide encouragement to readers to converse with the bloggers you read. ⁴

I know many of you play WoW,  and if you still haven’t discovered the mad comic genius of I Like Bubbles, head over there for a dose of gaming reality. (Some may call it insanity, but my retort would be, is there a difference?) Tell Amber, “Birdie sent me.”

Finally, I want to give a huge shout-out to all my friends and fellow bloggers who are taking part in NaNoWriMo. Keep on typing! I promise to have a bunch of stuff to help you out with editing your novels next month. I mean, I’ll post some of it this month, so you can find it next month. Look for the “copyediting” tag.

Caught In A Blogging Black Hole is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

Today, I got my first-ever fan letter. As I told Anna, if a manly man such as myself could squee, I’d be squeeing. And then, I actually did squee to Bre. But honestly, I’m simply beaming. 

Occasionally, I receive email via my Contact Form. Almost invariably, it’s a request to participate in a link-sharing scheme or to advertise something in which I have zero interest. A couple times, I’ve received requests for help or advice from fellow bloggers. Never before, though, have I received "fan mail." Here’s what thrilled me to pieces today:

D (Kul Tiras – H) wrote:

Dear Kestrel…

You’re the second blogger "fan" letter I’ve ever written. Just wanted to drop a note and say I enjoy your posts and your site a lot. Like many, I started out reading your blog because I was a new hunter and you were referenced from BRK’s site but I also really enjoy the tech and blogging technique posts a great deal.

It’s great to have an entertaining blogger who occupies roughly the same slice of the demographic pie as I do. Thanks for all the effort!

Regards.

D

(P.S. The first fan letter was to BRK. No man has done more to lift hunters from noobdom than he.) 

Needless to say, I was floored. I was ecstatic. I was (almost) squeeing. I’ve written before that we bloggers fight for feedback. That’s one reason most of my articles conclude with a humble request for your comments, good or bad. Of course, I answered the email from "D" right away with a huge thank-you, just as I try to respond to almost every comment on the site. I’m pretty sure I speak for 99 percent of bloggers, or more, when I say we want to establish a dialogue with our readers.

While I write stuff that interests me, I certainly hope it interests at least some of the 800 or so subscribers to my RSS feed, as well as the 100-200 people who drop by here every day. And stuff that gets more comments generally will be stuff I write about more. But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep writing about sports. *grin*

And I know a lot of you can’t comment directly because you read the Aerie (and other blogs!) at work through a feed reader. So…maybe send yourself an email the next time you’re moved to comment on any blog, with your comment, and post it when you get home. Because believe me, every single one of those comments is worth a dozen FeedBurner followers.

Support Your Local Blogger! is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

Let’s start with why we blog (well, why most of us do, anyway): We want to establish a rapport with our readers, and we want to interact with them. The genesis for this post was Brajana’s article on tips to improve blog usability at Mend Pet. She makes several excellent points, so by all means follow the link!

I read a lot of blogs–over 100, almost evenly split between WoW and non-WoW. Many of the non-WoW blogs are "professional blogs," that is, written by people whose livelihood is blogging. Still, I’d like to see some of the items I mention below on their blogs.

So what do I mean by "reader-friendly"? You may recall I posted last month a "Friday Five" article on reader-friendly WordPress plugins. I identified add-ons I use to improve the interaction between myself and my readers. However, there are other things you can do to facilitate that interaction, without addons.

• Make your RSS feed button PROMINENT. Definitely put it "above the fold" but preferably right at the top of your blog. And for heaven’s sake, if you have more than one "Subscribe" button, be sure they all point to the same place! A lot of bloggers have a FeedBurner button, but their theme also has a "Subscribe to RSS" link that points to their default feed–which pretty much defeats the purpose of using FeedBurner. (Yes, you’ll need to edit your theme to remove or change those additional links, but it’s a pretty simple task. Let me know if you need help!)
• Speaking of RSS feeds, give your subscribers a FULL RSS feed! Believe me, I’m not the only person who follows a hundred or more blogs each day. Even the most successful professional bloggers provide full feeds, and count on reader interaction to prompt click-throughs on their ads. (If you don’t have ads, then why insist readers click through to your blog?)
• Provide your readers with a way to communicate with you. There are a number of reasons a reader may want to write to you, other than by commenting on a post. I use a Contact Page, but just an email address or link is helpful. If you don’t want a clickable link for all the world’s spammers to use,¹ there is at least one website that will turn your email into an image.²

And yes, there are even more steps you can take with add-ons to make your blog more reader-friendly:

• Let your readers edit their comments. Sure, we ought to spell-check our comments before hitting "Submit," but who among us hasn’t read a comment we posted and said, "Oops!"? Or had a second (or third!) thought we wanted to add? I don’t know about you, but I hate commenting two or three times when one would suffice. (Sure, I ought to be more organized in my thinking, too, but hey…I have a hundred more blogs to read!) For self-hosted WordPress bloggers, I recommend WP Ajax Edit Comments. There are others out there (although I’m not sure what’s available for wordpress.com or blogspot.com).
• Speaking of comments, include a Subscribe to Comments link for each article. I do it through Mark Jaquith’s Subscribe To Comments. Once again, though, other solutions are available. This really encourages readers to follow a conversation. I find it especially handy for sites like Tami Moore‘s Blue Moon and Choose, where I interact not only with the author, but with other readers as well. And isn’t that what we REALLY want to do?

What tools and techniques do you use to keep your readers active and engaged with you and your blog? Share with all of us in the comments.

How to Make Your Blog Reader-Friendly is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

Thank you, every one of you great readers!



2K Comments – Thanks everyone! is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

Last week, as you may recall (the link is there in case you don’t), I showcased a handful of addons intended to enhance your interaction with your audience. This week, I want to talk about five more WordPress (WP) plugins I can’t blog without.

Bad Behavior 2.0.28
» Michael Hampton (url)
Deny automated spambots access to your PHP-based Web site. Bad Behavior catches between 600 and 700 spam attacks against my site every week. Together with Akismet (provided with every WP installation), there are probably between 1000 and 1500 spam threats each week. I have to manually delete perhaps one a day from the live comments, and between 10 and 20 from my spam box each week. Those numbers should give you an appreciation for how much work I don’t have to do to keep the Aerie spam-free. The result: I don’t need any pre-publication moderation of comments, whether you’re a first time visitor, or have been coming here for two years!

 One Click Plugin Updater 2.4.13
» Janis Elsts (url)
Upgrade plugins with a single click, install new plugins or themes from an URL or by uploading a file, see which plugins have update notifications enabled, control how often WordPress checks for updates, and more. WordPress has included a lot of the functionality of this plugin in recent updates; however, this add-on is, for me, still a bit more elegant, especially for installing new plugins directly from a hosting website.

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu 3.3.1
» Ozh (url)
All admin links available in a neat horizontal drop down menu. Saves lots of screen real estate! Again, recent versions of WordPress have vastly improved the administration user interface, but I find Ozh’ programs (this one, and the Better Plugin Page listed below) provide enhanced ease-of-use, and they simply look better!

Ozh’ Better Plugin Page 1.4.2
» Ozh (url)
Adds a little sliding plugin list and buttons to toggle display of Active/Inactive/Out-of-date plugins to the “Manage Plugins” page. When I think of "at-a-glance" functionality, this plugin has it, and that’s why I continue to use it, despite the improvements to WordPress’ provided plugin monitor.

 WordPress Automatic Upgrade 1.2.5
» Keith Dsouza (url)
WordPress Automatic Upgrade allows a user to automatically upgrade the wordpress installation to the latest one provided by wordpress.org using the 5 steps provided in the wordpress upgrade instructions. Want to induce a panic attack in a blogger really quickly? Simply leave out a step in the WordPress upgrade/update process…such as backing up the database, or layout (theme) files…then have the upgrade itself choke. Or, you can use this plugin, and as long as you can read simple instructions ("Click Here"), you can blithely upgrade WP in about 5 minutes, instead of taking 5 minutes for each step, checking and double-checking that you are proceeding in the proper order and haven’t skipped anything. While others are still sweating bullets, you can be Tweeting about how you just finished, or you can even write another article for your blog!

 Tomorrow: Remains of the Week

Once again on Saturday, I’ll share with you the cool stuff I found and shared with my Google Reader followers throughout this past week. In the meantime, I’d love to see in the comments the WordPress tools you can’t live without, as well as any suggestions you might have for future Fridays.

Friday Five: Absolutely Must-Have WordPress Addons is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

My Frustration

A few minutes ago, I posted attempted to post a comment to a blog I read regularly. It’s a very popular blog, and with good reason: The writing is solid, the news is current, and the content is varied. And until very recently, commenters were welcomed. I’m not sure when it changed, but my attempted comment was greeted with “This comment is awaiting moderation” (or words to that effect).¹

What “Blog” Means to Me

My concept of a blog is of a vehicle for communication—two-way communication—between myself and my audience. Anything I put between myself and my readers that in any way inhibits or delays the free interchange of ideas, by its very existence, narrows the opportunity for continuing such intercourse. So at Kestrel’s Aerie, you won’t find captchas, or math problems, or any aggressive preemptive moderation.²

I view anti-spam measures in a completely different light than I do anti-troll measures. I employ the first, but not the second, and I do both as a service to you, my audience. If someone wants to come here and be a complete asshat, fine. The probability of a loyal reader (or two or three) taking such a troll to task before I can respond are high. Fortunately, the Aerie has been troll-free since its inception; however, I’m experienced enough in the ways of the Internet to know it’s only a matter of time before that changes. I’m not concerned, though: After all, I have the ultimate defense against trolls. It’s the “Delete comment” button, and I am trained in its use.

“Wait a sec, Kes! That’s…[insert horrified gasp]…censorship!” Why yes…yes it is! After all, this blog is my property, and I have the right to defend it as I see fit. Look at it this way: I own a home. I have the choice of erecting a fence (and there are several styles of fencing available to me) to keep you from seeing my well-maintained landscape (and to keep your dog off the lawn), or I can simply clean up the crap if you let your dog use my lawn as an outhouse. Pretty much, I trust you to police your dog.

What’s Preemptive Moderation?

Of course, there are different kinds of preemptive moderation, and it can reasonably be argued some are worse than others. For instance, captchas simply make you go a bit out of your way to post your comment (a thousand blessings on each and every Blogspot blogger who has disabled its onerous captcha option!). On the other hand, there are other blogs that erect a huge stone wall between you and the blog’s comment threads in the form of active moderation of all comments before they appear. Strangely enough, it seems more large blogs, with scores or hundreds of comments each week, do this more than smaller blogs. A case in point, of course, is the blog on which I commented earlier today.³ I doubt I’m alone in thinking my future comments there will probably be considerably fewer in number than in the past.

So why do bloggers throw up these roadblocks? I’m sure part of it stems from experiences with trolls, or comments that turned into arguments, which in turn got fairly nasty. Clearly, one way to avoid such unpleasantness is to stop such comments before they appear. But how does this differ from my practice⁴ of editing or removing offensive material? In law, this is akin to “prior restraint,”⁵ which is an attempt by a government entity to disallow or prevent expression of thought before publication.

What’s the Cost?

You may be thinking this all sounds reasonable (especially if you write a blog that employs such methods! ), but consider this: How much time do you think a blogger spends going through every single comment, trying to decide if it’s spam, or troll-bait, or an advertisement (which, in my view, is spam by another name)? Wouldn’t it make more sense if the same blogger could reduce that time to less than one percent of the time previously spent? It certainly does to me!

There are 1,700+ comments posted on this site. I would guess I’ve had to actually review perhaps 300 comments (and that guess is on the high side) to determine that yes, it really is spam or no, it was a false positive. And of those 300, the false positives (i.e., comments flagged as spam which were in fact legitimate) number perhaps 30. By the same token, less than 30 comments have actually posted to this site that shouldn’t have been (spammers are getting more creative!). On the other hand, Bad Behavior alone blocks well over 500 spam comments—every single week!

Clearly, I expend a lot less time and energy dealing with comments than someone who preemptively moderates. That gives me more time to do other things—such as write walls of text!

The other price you might be paying is one of credibility: Who’s to say what comments are not seeing the light of day? Of course, as I stated above, that’s certainly your right. On the other hand, it does bring into question just how self-serving your comment threads might be. And just to be clear, I am NOT ascribing any such motive to anyone: I get that preemptive moderation is an anti-troll measure, and no one detests trolls more than I. However, others may not be so understanding.

Where’s the Beef?

Pulling this all together, my primary issue with preemptive moderation is, at the very least, it inhibits the free, open, and timely interchange of ideas between bloggers and their readers. The best and biggest blogs to which I subscribe require no more than I do, in order to comment. Even the biggest and best WoW blogs (not the same as the blogs in the preceding sentence) should follow suit.⁶

Preemptive Moderation: Biting the Hand That Feeds You is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie

I love comments on my blog, even if I don’t agree with them (or if the commenter doesn’t agree with me). It means I’m being read, and what I had to say had meaning to someone else.

But I won’t suffer fools, and fools are what I consider anonymous commenters to be. I have even harsher words for anonymous people who spew bile while hiding under that cowardly cloak of anonymity.

If you have a conviction, whether it’s in consonance with my views or not, I respect you the more for putting a name behind that conviction.

Anonymous Commenters: Unwelcome, and Not Allowed is a post from: Kestrel's Aerie